Ke­jan Haynes

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh says "health for all" has been and will al­ways be a main fo­cus for the Gov­ern­ment. In his state­ment in recog­ni­tion of World Health Day he said it is his "un­wa­ver­ing mis­sion to cre­ate a health-con­scious so­ci­ety in Trinidad and To­ba­go which re­sists the will­ful pro­gres­sion of dis­eases that are caused by Mod­i­fi­able Risk Fac­tors such as smok­ing, the harm­ful use of al­co­hol, drug abuse, im­mo­bil­i­ty and poor di­ets com­pris­ing sug­ars and trans fats."

World Health Day is cel­e­brat­ed every year on April 7. This year, the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion will ob­serve its 75th an­niver­sary. Trinidad and To­ba­go is one of 194 mem­ber coun­tries. "A clear rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the WHO's role in gov­ern­ing in­ter­na­tion­al health mat­ters was clear­ly vis­i­ble over the last three years where they shoul­dered the huge and high­ly com­plex task of co­or­di­nat­ing a glob­al re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic," Deyals­ingh said in his state­ment.

He said the gov­ern­ment is will­ing to work with the WHO to achieve Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals tar­gets by 2030.

Deyals­ingh ex­tend­ed his "grat­i­tude to the WHO for its ground­break­ing achieve­ments over the years" say­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go has ben­e­fit­ted from its strides to im­prove pub­lic health sys­tems. He said Trinidad and To­ba­go is one of 43 coun­tries in the world that of­fers free ac­cess to pri­ma­ry health­care to all mem­bers of the pub­lic. He cit­ed im­prove­ments to Blood Trans­fu­sion Ser­vices, HIV and AIDS ser­vices, Women's Health Ser­vices, and re­cent­ly its guide­lines to deal­ing with do­mes­tic and sex­u­al vi­o­lence, as ma­jor achieve­ments in lo­cal health­care.